Until the middle of the last century, our forefathers thought far more
of foreign enterprise than of the internal communications of their own
island. An Englishman of the time of Elizabeth might be acquainted
with all the intricacies of the Arctic Ocean or of the West Indies;
but it by no means followed that he was able to sketch a map of his
own country. The sea was the great highway of trade and fame, and the
commercial towns were all seaports.
Previous to the accession of George III., the communications throughout
England were of the most wretched kind, the great highways being simply
the worn-out tracks of the old Roman roads. The manufactures of our
country, struggling into notice, were greatly hampered by this lack
of communication, few facilities for carriage existing, and distant
markets being beyond reach. The little carrying-trade was necessarily
of the slowest and most expensive kind, and goods were conveyed to
the nearest port or navigable river, generally by long strings of
packhorses, less frequently by the slow clumsy stage-wagon. Packhorses
conveyed from the Severn the clay used in the Potteries, bringing back
in return coarse earthenware for export. The cloth-manufacturer of
Yorkshire saddled his horse with his wares and travelled from fair to
fair as his own salesman; and the little cotton used in the Manchester
looms was transported from Liverpool in the same primitive fashion.
This was the state of the communications in England in 1757, when
the Duke of Bridgewater, having been crossed in love by one of the
beautiful Miss Gunnings, turned his attention to the more prosaic
employment of canal construction. His idea was to construct a waterway,
or ‘navigation,’ from his coal-pits to Manchester, a distance of ten
miles. Short as this distance appears in our time, it offered so
great a barrier in those days, that the supply of fuel was always
limited and uncertain. The duke, who was desirous of engaging an
engineer to put his idea into practical form, was advised to employ
the famous millwright Brindley, who had already made himself a name
in the district for his clever contrivances in the pottery-works and
the silk-factories. Like many others who have risen to fame, Brindley
was a self-made man. To his natural-born genius, there were united
two characteristics which are necessary to all such pioneers—great
perseverance, and a confidence in his own judgment which overbore all
the adverse criticism of the multitude. His diary, which is extant,
shows his school education to have been of the scantiest; the words,
spelt in the broad Staffordshire dialect, and the painfully crabbed
writing, excite alternately our amusement and our respect; whilst it
shows throughout the dogged determination of the individual to overcome
difficulty.
Brindley was no sooner installed as engineer of the works than he
completely altered the duke’s plan. To construct the proposed canal—or
‘novogation,’ as Brindley has it—it was necessary to cross the river
Irwell, and it was here that he first showed his marvellous courage and
skill. The duke’s plan had been to drop the canal by a series of locks
to the level of the river, and to raise it again on the farther side
by the same means. But Brindley, who foresaw that locks would always
prove a great hindrance to traffic, decided that the canal should not
change its level, but should cross the river on a stone aqueduct.
Nothing of the kind had ever before been attempted in this country,
and, to ordinary minds, the idea of boats, laden with coals, sailing,
as it were in mid-air, seemed preposterous. It must be allowed, to
the everlasting credit of the duke, that, although somewhat uncertain
in his own mind as to the result of the scheme, he nevertheless
allowed Brindley to proceed. In spite of general ridicule, the works
were commenced, the aqueduct was built; and derision was turned into
amazement when the canal-boats passed over and the structure showed no
sign of collapse. The packhorses were dispensed with, and the price
of coal in Manchester fell to one-half. The success, both to the
projector and the community, was so complete, that the duke at once
sought further powers to extend the canal westward, and thus to open
communication with the port of Liverpool. After much opposition from
landowners and others, Brindley commenced this extension; but although
no great engineering difficulties were encountered, the expenditure
for some years had been so heavy that the want of money threatened
to offer a serious obstacle to the completion of the scheme. The
duke’s credit became so low that the greatest task of the week was the
collecting of a sufficient amount to pay the wages of the labourers on
the works; and it was only by much scheming and economy that the works
were at length completed.
Meanwhile, the Staffordshire Potteries had begun to clamour for a
waterway, and Brindley had undertaken the survey of a canal which was
to connect them with the Trent and Mersey. Wedgwood, the great potter,
gave all his influence to a scheme for uniting his factories with the
sea, and even removed his works to a site on the proposed canal, known
henceforth by the ancient name of Etruria. The great undertaking in the
construction of this canal was the tunnel, a mile and a half in length,
under that part of the Pennine chain which separates Staffordshire
from Cheshire. This tunnel was to constitute the highest point or
‘summit-level’ of the canal; and the supply of water was to be obtained
from a system of reservoirs situated at a still higher elevation and
fed by the surrounding hills. But tunnelling was a new experiment in
engineering; many unforeseen difficulties arose to hinder the work,
and it was only after eleven years of heavy anxiety and stubborn
perseverance that this last link in the communication was completed.
The carriage of a ton of goods from Liverpool to Etruria, which had
cost under the old system fifty shillings, was reduced to one-fourth.
This tunnel, the pioneer of many miles of tunnelling since constructed,
still exists. It is simply a long culvert, just large enough to allow
of the passage of a single barge. There is no accommodation for hauling
the traffic through, and the barges are consequently propelled from end
to end by the exertions of the boatmen alone. Fifty years after its
construction, the traffic on the canal had increased to such an extent
that the mouths of the tunnel were perpetually blocked by a crowd of
boats waiting to pass through, and the fights and quarrels among the
boatmen for first place were a disgrace to the Canal Company. After
much pressure, the authorities called in the Scotch engineer Telford,
and to him was intrusted the construction of a second tunnel. The want
of suitable machinery, of skilled labour and of money, were obstacles
comparatively unknown to Telford, and the new tunnel, large enough
to allow of a towing-path, was constructed in three years. The two
works, side by side, represent fifty years’ progress in the science of
engineering.
But to return to Brindley and his triumphs. In North Warwickshire, a
colony of iron-workers had sprung up in the midst of a plain, worn into
narrow ‘hollow-ways’ by the tread of the ubiquitous packhorse. The
few letters sent to this large village of blacksmiths were addressed
‘Birmingham, near Coleshill,’ this latter place being the nearest
point on the high road. Through this district, Brindley succeeded in
cutting a canal from the Trent to the Severn; and thus Birmingham, the
Potteries, and Manchester were each connected with the Irish and North
Seas.
Brindley’s last great work was the projection of a canal from Leeds
to Liverpool; but owing partly to the difficulties of the country
passed through, and partly to the scarcity of labourers through the
continental wars, the canal was not completed throughout until 1816,
long after Brindley’s death. The summit of this canal is in the wild
and stony district of Pendle Forest, where are situated the great
reservoirs—one being over a hundred acres in extent—which feed the
higher levels of the canal with water. These reservoirs are maintained
in repair and efficiency at the present day by the owners of the
numerous stone quarries of the district, to whom the canal offers great
facilities for transit.
Under Rennie and Telford, canal construction was continued, and old
methods were improved upon. The Barton aqueduct of Brindley sank into
insignificance before the works of these later engineers, whose canals,
instead of winding round the hillsides to avoid cuttings, were led
through hills and over valleys regardless of obstacles. Besides the
completion of English canals, we owe to these two men the construction
of the canal from the Forth to the Clyde and the Caledonian Canal, in
Scotland; and the two parallel canals in Ireland which connect Dublin
with the Atlantic. Thus, in half a century was the country covered with
a network of waterways, giving an impulse to manufactures which had
hitherto been shut out from foreign markets.
About the end of last century, a great impulse was given to the traffic
on the canals by a Mr Baxendale, the agent of Pickford, the well-known
carrier. By his efforts, a thorough system of canal communication
was established and maintained, and greater punctuality was observed
in the arrival and departure of the boats. Express or fly boats also
came into use for the more important merchandise and for passenger
traffic. On the Bridgewater Canal, they plied with passengers between
Manchester and Liverpool; and in the neighbourhood of the larger towns
they conveyed the market-women home to the surrounding villages. In
1798, many of the troops for the Irish campaign were conveyed by canal
from London to Liverpool. When the railway systems were projected, some
of their greatest opponents were the canal Companies, who fancied they
saw in the new mode of transit, utter ruin to their own traffic. It
was said that the canals would soon become useless and overgrown with
weeds, and it was even proposed to buy up the canal Companies, fill
in the water-channels, and lay down the line of rails in their stead.
But in spite of all these dark forebodings, and notwithstanding the
utility of the new method as compared with the old, the canals still
maintain their ground. Their traffic since the advent of the railways
has steadily increased; canal shares are usually considered safe stock,
and therefore seldom change hands. Both systems of communication have
their advantages; and whilst the locomotive is the great economiser of
time, there are many articles of commerce, in the shape of building
materials and fragile goods, in the carrying of which the canals are
more suitable. They remain at the present day a lasting and still
useful monument to the English enterprise and perseverance of the last
century.
To turn to the present century: M. de Lesseps has been so successful
with the Suez Canal, and promises to be with the Panama one, that it
is no wonder that he should have many followers; and it is to be noted
that the canals proposed now are all on the large scale—canals for
ships of large size. They are mostly through narrow necks of land,
although one of them is to connect an inland town, Manchester, about
thirty miles from salt water, directly with the sea. The Isthmus of
Corinth is the site of another; and still another is to run into the
great Sahara of Africa and convert it into a great salt-water lake.
How long this lake would take to fill up with solid salt is a nice
question, which we have not sufficient means of determining, as the
other ‘salt lakes’ of the world are all supplied with fresh water, and
have only as yet attained to a more or less briny state.